Dancing Grass Designs LLC

Photo Credit: Chesapeake Bay Program

Dancing Grass Designs LLC

Poolesville, Maryland

Membership Type: Gold

Project Summary

Dancing Grass Designs is a Founding Businesses for the Bay Member. They are a professional landscape design firm specializing in sustainable practices and creating beautiful and functional artistic habitats for residential and small commercial gardens. Their services include planting design, hardscape design, installations and project management. They also provide consultation services to homeowners, builders, and architects pursuing LEED for Homes certification.

A patio/seatwall/retaining wall/vegetated swale that Dancing Grass Designs designed and installed to reduce stormwater run-off.

Their robust Businesses for the Bay program includes four out of the five Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement themes. In addition to planting native plants for clients, Dancing Grass Designs plants and maintains over 100 native trees, approximately ½ acre of native meadow (including Andropogon virginicus and Schizachyrium scoparium), and hundreds of native plants that provide cover in winter with the overall goals of providing conduits for wildlife movement, re-establishing habitat for wildlife, and reducing stormwater runoff, at their office site.

Their office site is adjacent to a Forest Conservation Easement. Dancing Grass Designs went above and beyond by planting and maintaining over 30 native trees on their property to help connect the fractured forest, creating important wildlife corridors between their office site and the Forest Conservation Easement.

Dancing Grass Designs educates their clients about the importance of controlling stormwater runoff, including the design and installation of 1700 square feet of vegetated swales (in 2016) in regions of Montgomery County where the soil does not percolate and lend itself to the installation of rain gardens. A popular stormwater control method, rain gardens, will not work as well as vegetated swales in the heavy clay soil of northern Montgomery County. In 2017, they plan to increase awareness and provide environmental education for the public with a digital newsletter or blog about sustainable practices.

Poolesville Community Garden planters

In addition to all of their on-the-ground projects, Dancing Grass Designs installed and maintains solar panels at their office site. In 2016, they used 12.3 MWh of solar energy! In 2017, they plan to purchase an electric car for company travel.

Themes Fulfilled

Clean Water

Conserved Lands

Engaged Communities

Fisheries and Habitats

Other Green Initiatives

Dancing Grass Designs fits “hand-in-glove” with the B4B program. As a sustainable landscape design practice, we create beautiful gardens that artistically manage stormwater, provide wildlife habitat, reduce energy use, and provide a sense of place—genius loci—where outdoor spaces enable natural and built systems to work together. This is a wonderful opportunity to share our best practices and learn about the efforts of other member companies.